Ding
by Footlights
Summary: Shortly after meeting KITT, Michael decides his new ride would be a lot more perfect if it couldn't talk. It becomes all too easy to fix it.
1. Techno-Junk in the Driver's Seat

It really was like piloting a jet down the highway.

Michael pressed down on the gas, listening to the distinctive whir of the engine pick up in response. He felt just a hint of the power concealed beneath the hood as the rapid acceleration pushed him back in his seat. The digital speedometer raced upward. The numbers rolled past one another, the red figures blurring in time with the increasingly smeary scenery outside the car. He zoomed by a little puddle—a pond?-and a fence that was probably chain link but trickled together to appear like a solid wall.

The road stretched on ahead of him, straight and deserted, and he rocketed into Pursuit. The tires streaked along the pavement. The car cruised low to the ground. For a second, it seemed there was nothing between Michael and the sun-baked cement, like he was gliding on a water slide. Exhilaration lifted his spirits to dizzying heights. He let loose an enthusiastic whoop, sure that at any moment the wheels would lift off, and he would be soaring through the cloudless sky.

Maybe on his way to some space mission, investigating a bunch of Martian embezzlers. He glanced at all the blinking lights and switches and other techno-junk crowding around the driver's seat. A trip to another planet wouldn't surprise him, actually. It already felt like he'd crossed over to a separate universe.

Instead of blast-off, Michael realized he was approaching a sharp turn. There wasn't much time between spotting it and having to deal with it at his current speed. He stomped at the brake. The car screeched but slowed—quicker than he would have thought possible.

A wave of paranoia hit. Was the pedal already depressed before he stepped on it? He inspected the dashboard, making sure nothing that said _auto_-anything was lit up.

Auto Cruise remained dark.

"Better not have done anything," he muttered. "I am the only one driving this car."

He tried to grab a top section of the steering wheel that did not exist in his distraction, causing the vehicle to swerve off the road briefly as he hurried to catch the separated portions that were there.

A creepy, disembodied voice—a voice that Michael had hoped never to hear again—responded.

"Of course I didn't do anything. I wouldn't dream of being so careless."

Michael pointedly turned up the radio. _You can't dream._

It couldn't, right?

Whatever. He was determined to drown it out. A car that could _talk_. He thought back on what Devon had told him and shook his head. A car that could _think_. Old man Wilton had to have been a few cards short of a deck when he decided "conversational" was a necessary feature for a four-wheeled, gas-guzzling machine. Okay, it was fuel efficient, but the fact remained that there wasn't a thing on it to suggest it needed to speak.

Cars didn't have mouths, for instance. A flashing bulb here, a chiming alarm there, and his previous Trans Am let him know when it was on empty or he left the keys in the ignition without any problems. This thing had more than enough gizmos to communicate via light show. The knowledge that it was _aware_ of what he just said and the mistake he just made was too bizarre. It was uncanny and invasive. Was it watching him, listening to him, all the time?

Michael kept the music loud. He fished his sunglasses out of the pocket of his leather jacket and slipped them on, shielding his eyes from whatever cameras were tucked away within the interior. Then he sat back, laid on the gas, and tried to forget about it.

It worked, for a few miles. Unfortunately he was heading into a more populated area and had to be content cruising at a sedate sixty-five. Traffic increased. He was sandwiched between a semi and a pickup truck before long, the open horizon eclipsed by a dingy trailer and a pair of half-busted taillights. One of them glowed weakly as he approached an intersection, warning Michael that the traffic light he could no longer see in front of them must have turned red.

He glanced at the driver side mirror while he waited to go. There was a beagle sticking its head out the window of the pickup behind him, its pink tongue drooping from its frothy jaws, and he smirked at the drool dribbling down the glass and onto the truck's body. The change in expression shifted his focus from the dog to the stranger in the mirror. His reflection looked pretty darn great for a guy who took a bullet to the face, but it didn't look like his face, and he wondered if he would ever be able to feel like those unfamiliar features belonged to him. His eyes weren't even brown anymore, for Christ's sake.

"Mr. Knight, the light turned green precisely five seconds ago." The unnerving voice piped up out of nowhere. "Is there a reason for the delay?"

Michael jumped. "Gees!"

Before the car could tell him that now the light had been green for _six_ seconds, the driver of the pickup sent the same exact message by honking their horn.

Michael got moving, clenching the steering… thing a lot tighter than necessary. It seemed crazy to direct his aggravation at the dash. "Yeah, there's a reason. The reason is because I felt like it. And that better be enough for you, cos I sure don't plan on having to justify every little hiccup."

"Understood, Mr. Knight."

"My name's Long." The correction came without a thought, and Michael had already realized his mistake by the time the car started to answer.

"Well, yes, but since that identity no longer exists—"

"Yeah, I got it. Never mind." He couldn't help picturing the real Mr. Knight, telling him he was going to be the man that made a difference just before passing away in his bed. Knight and Long were both dead now. "Look, just—just call me Michael, alright?"

"Of course, Michael."

He hoped it would seem less creepy if the talking car used his real name, but its voice sounded so disturbingly pleasant, it had the opposite effect. It might have been paranoia again, but he could have sworn the tone was warmer—like the car was _glad _to be invited to speak to him in more familiar terms. A flare of irritation heated his skin. It was not an invitation to speak in any way, and cars had no business being glad.

"You know what? Don't call me anything," he snapped. "I said I wasn't gonna drive around in a motormouth car, and I meant it. You mind your own beeswax and can it!"

The only noise was the spiel of the advertisements on the radio for a beat. It was just long enough to catch a hint of the same tired "saving big with low, low prices" crap, then the volume dropped.

"A highly unusual request. However, seeing as I'm not equipped with any beeswax, I can do nothing of the kind."

Michael laughed. The fastest, safest, strongest car in the world was still pretty stupid. "It means shut up and leave me alone, tinker toy."

"Very well."

The radio commercials came back at full blast. Michael tried to relax and concentrate on the road, but what he really wanted was to get out of the car as soon as possible. He considered it a small blessing when the next sign he passed indicated there were a couple recognizable restaurants close by. Fumbling around for the turn signal—all the wild gadgetry obscured some of the car's basic functions—he took the next exit. It seemed like the ideal opportunity to stretch his legs, grab some grub, and test out the brand new credit cards under his brand new name.

* * *

Michael Knight probably looked like a guy who would have a nervous break down over which socks to put on each morning.

He didn't actually give a rat's foot about what he was buying, let alone his socks, but he had circled the tiny convenience store at least four times now, and the two employees were starting to give him funny looks. He acted like he was oblivious to their scrutiny, coming to a halt in front of a refrigerated section to peer at the drinks behind the glass. There wasn't much variety. The best he could do was snag a cold bottle of off-brand cola and surrender to the inevitable.

It was time to check out. Now that he was approaching the counter, he realized the woman working the register was sort of attractive in a holding-hands-at-the-hometown-fair kind of way. He smiled in apology and added a roll of Life Savers to his one other purchase in an attempt to make his time in the store seem more productive. He would have sprung for a bigger snack, but he just finished eating at the place next door, and their burgers were huge and worth every bite.

The cashier smiled back, seeming amused. "Find everything okay?"

"I'm all set. Thanks."

"There's a park up the street with a decent-sized running track."

He raised an eyebrow. "You think I look like a runner?"

"You seem kinda restless." She rang up his stuff, her movements as swift and exacting as any professional athlete. While he paid (no problem with the credit cards), she glanced wistfully out the window next to her station. Then her eyes went wide. "Oh, wow, poor guy. Must have lost his keys to the car."

Michael turned around so fast, he almost went down on the red and gold checked floor. He didn't know why her comment spooked him so much, except that what she was looking at was some incident involving _the car_, which sent his mind careening toward a mountain of sleek, black, autonomous disasters. Fortunately the view from the window was of a half-occupied parking lot, containing a bunch of vehicles that weren't Trans Ams. He released a breath, relieved but also mad at himself.

This thing was going to drive him straight to crazy if he let it. There were other cars in the world. Hundreds of thousands of other cars. Besides, he reasoned, he left _that _car by the restaurant, and it wasn't even visible from here.

If it had stayed in the spot where he parked it.

"Sir? Do you want a bag?"

"Sounds good," he mumbled absently.

He had noticed the guy that concerned the cashier and was now watching him with interest. The man appeared to be mid-to-late forties, white, average height, medium build, with peppery graying hair and an uneven mustache. It was instinctual to size him up like a suspect, though Michael didn't see any definite sign he was committing a crime. There was just something off about the way he was examining that red Mercedes. He wasn't looking down or pacing the parking lot, as he should have been, if he was searching for dropped keys. He seemed a lot more intrigued with what was inside the car, and he stood stock still, peering into the passenger window.

Michael realized then that the woman working the register was holding a bag out to him, waiting for him to take it.

"Do you want this, or…?" She was giving him a strange look, either because she had been holding the bag for awhile, or because he said he wanted a bag for some candy and a soda when he had perfectly good pockets and hands.

"Keep it for me for a minute, would ya? I'm going to see if that guy outside needs some help."

"Ah, okay, but—"

The door jangled shut behind him. The wind was picking up. There was a chill in the air, even as sunlight continued to beat down on the asphalt. If this guy was planning to try something, he was an idiot. A thief might as well steal under a spotlight on stage if they were willing to perform their dirty work midday in front of multiple businesses.

Michael stepped off the curb and began to stroll through the rows of cars. He kept it casual, making it a point to pull out his sunglasses so he could toy with them as he approached. He flipped the arms open, then closed, then open again in effort to strike up a relaxed, seemingly unconscious rhythm. Nothing you see here. Just a good old bored Samaritan passing through.

The guy heard him coming and looked over. His eyes looked like they were deprived of a few hours' sleep.

"Hi," Michael called out. "Car trouble?"

He went a little stiff, but his expression was friendly, open to conversation. "Nope. Wife trouble."

"Really? Well, who isn't a sucker for a lady in red?" Michael nodded at the Mercedes's gleaming paint job. He didn't allow himself to wonder whether that terrible joke would have occurred to him a few days ago.

The guy humored him with a chuckle. The tips of his teeth showed when he laughed, yellow edges exposed beneath his mustache. "My wife wanted me to get her purse, but, you know, once I got out here, I was thinking, she's still got the damn keys on her."

Michael moved to stand beside him and bent, hands on his legs, to see in the window. Sure enough, there was a purse in plain sight, sitting right on the seat. "Huh. You know, she really shouldn't leave that where anybody can see it. It's like a written invitation to low-lifes looking to score easy cash." He glanced sideways.

There was no sign of discomfort or agitation. The guy was cool and steady as a slab of stone.

"You mind telling her that? I tell her myself all the time, but she don't hear the half of what I say."

"Is that right?" Michael straightened up with a shrug. "It'd be no problem at all for me to wait for you to get her."

"Naw, I was kidding. You go on getting on with your day." The guy started to walk away, pausing to add, "Thanks, though. Good to see there are still people like you out there."

"Sure thing."

Michael watched the guy disappear into the Italian restaurant he had opted not to eat at earlier, feeling dissatisfied. He didn't know why. There was no concrete reason for him to doubt anything he'd been told. There was just a twisting in his gut that wouldn't go away. His time in the police force taught him how valuable gut feelings could be, but—

_Blood seeping through an electrician uniform. His partner, dead, abandoned. The night sky, the gunfire. The sound of the bullet in his head, striking metal, pulverizing bone. The tail of an asteroid shredding its way out of his face._

Tanya.

He knew his instincts could be way off the mark too. Everything the guy said and did seemed to suggest this was one of those times. The fact was he was wrong, and he needed to brush it off and take the guy's advice and get on with the day.


	2. Seizing the Soda by the Neck

**A/N: Thank you so much for the kind comments. I'm planning to continue this for around ten chapters. Maybe more, possibly less. I'm having such a great time getting to know this fandom. It's a really fun head space to play in. :) **

Somebody needed to invest in a weed eater about eight Christmases ago.

The steep incline between the parking lots was beyond overgrown. Michael marched through the tangled brush, lifting his knees high to free his feet from the snarls only to get knotted up all over again in the next step. The bag he was carrying collided with his leg on the upswing. The Life Savers clinked against the soda, and perspiration from the bottle soaked into the brown paper surrounding it, darkening a corner on the bottom.

If that car wasn't there when he reached the top of the hill, he was returning it. It could go back to the mad scientists' headquarters and have its switches flipped around by an entourage of crackpots in construction helmets forever, for all he cared. There was nothing Michael would enjoy more at the moment than calling in to tell Devon the whole experiment was a bust, nothing that would simplify his life quicker than opting out for another set of wheels. Any old rust bucket would do, just as long as it was nice and normal and didn't complain.

Before Michael could get too invested in fond memories of the '56 Chevy he drove in high school, he set foot on the burger joint's parking lot and all his hopes dried up in a cloud of dust. The car was still there. It was sitting in the back of the lot, exactly where he left it. He chose the spot because no one was parked around that area, and he thought keeping the car in isolation would remove the temptation for it to chitchat with the blissfully ignorant. Now he saw that, while he was gone, the owner of a station wagon had elected to nestle his vehicle in beside it for no apparent reason.

"Terrific." Michael went around the front of the car on his way to the driver's side. Movement caught his eye, and he stopped short. "That's just great."

The strip of red lights embedded in the hood was on and almost definitely had been leeching off the battery this entire time. The glare of the sun disguised it at first, but, up close, there was no doubt it was active. Each illuminated bulb lit the next in gradual sweeps back and forth and forth and back again. Every trip was accompanied by a soft _woo-wooing _that sounded like it would be more at home in the throat of a contented Sasquatch than between hefty pieces of machinery. The lights seemed to work faster as he watched, as if mocking him.

What were they for, anyway? Intimidation? He had to admit they made for an eerie first impression in the dark.

In a hurry now, Michael yanked on the door handle, and it gave way. Did he forget to lock the thing too? He exhaled through gritted teeth and plopped down in the seat. "C'mon, start."

"Certainly." The car fired up its engine, no problem at all. "Can I ask what is so wonderful about my front end?"

Michael's hand froze midway to the controls. The motor was humming away before he could touch anything. He skimmed over the glowing monitors and gauges on display but couldn't find an on/off button labeled _Shimmying Red Hood Lights_. Oh, well. They must not be that taxing on the battery, or maybe the car had some godlike kind of battery, or, actually, it was probably something a lot more complicated than that. He didn't know and would never want to understand it.

He reached into his bag, seizing the soda by the neck. "No, you cannot. Now, hush up."

It took three swigs for Michael to decide he didn't like the drink. It tasted just enough like a Pepsi to make him crave the real thing, and every sip after the first could only offer disappointment. He held the chilly bottle up to his forehead, taking some of its sweat for himself. It was stuffy in the car. The interior felt about as ventilated as a ballistic vest.

Well, no wonder. When he looked, he saw the place where the vents should be was plastered over with futuristic garbage, buried with all the other typical, useful, reasonable things that actually belonged in a car. That would be just his luck—doomed to crisscross the country in the world's most expensive slow cooker. Although, thinking back on it, he never felt bothered by heat in the car before. Even driving with the windows—

A high-pitched siren sliced through the stillness of the parking lot, demanding and razor-sharp. It didn't sound like the cry of an ambulance or a police cruiser. There wasn't an emergency vehicle in sight. It went off three times, and then the tone deepened, switching to another head-turning sequence of descending beeps.

It was a car alarm.

Michael's stomach dropped.

"I'm detecting a disturbance in the lot below us," the car said. "There appears to be—"

"Think the Mercedes beat you to the punch." Michael already knew everything there was to know about the passenger window and the purse on the seat and the guy with the crooked mustache and the likely story. He could have prevented this. "So much for those super advanced sensors."

He could still stop the guy. He threw open the door. Unthinking, just needing to free his hands, he put the bottle of soda down on the car floor and left it resting upright against the center console. The red square above the different cruise mode settings started flashing immediately.

"Excuse me, I know you're not intending to leave that open container leaning so precariously close to my—"

Michael sprinted across the pavement. He reached the hill dividing the lots and leapt from stride to stride to the bottom, catching himself in a low crouch. Weeds pricked his palms. He pushed off the ground and kept running.

The Mercedes was ahead, a glistening beacon. He squinted. There was a ghost-white elderly lady by the red car—no guy. He stopped. His boots crunched and skidded over pieces of shattered glass.

The lady looked at him without seeing him, face blank. "Someone, someone broke the… He took m-my..."

"I know." Michael's pulse was roaring in his ears. He grasped the lady's shoulders as gently as he could, trying to steady his voice through heavy breaths. "Listen to me. Did you see which way he went?"

The lady turned her head.

Michael followed her gaze. Around the corner of the Italian restaurant, he caught a glimpse of peppery hair.

He made to dart after him, but he was blocked in. All the commotion was attracting some attention now. The alarm was still wailing, cycling through four or five different tones. Interested onlookers were beginning to gather around the Mercedes as they caught on to the trouble.

Someone who had been listening over Michael's shoulder spoke up. "Which way did she say?"

Someone else waved their arms, standing in the brown brick doorway. "Cops say they're coming."

The guy could be gone by the time they showed up. The officers wouldn't know who they were looking for. Michael weaved inbetween a couple teenagers and hurried around the building. He went to the side opposite of where he saw the guy in an effort to intercept him.

It paid off. The guy plowed into Michael. Michael's elbow jabbed into his ribs. The guy winced, grunted, and tried to do an about-face.

"Hey!" Michael nabbed him by the shirt, disgusted. "What do you think you're doing, man? You don't wanna be the piece of scum that steals from a little old lady."

"That what you think I did?" The guy reeled back.

Michael tensed, expecting a fist to rattle his skull and a black eye come morning.

The purse was tan leather with a shoulder strap. The guy had it looped a few times around his wrist, and he swung it into Michael's gut.

It hit like a wrecking ball. The world got real shady, as if Michael was looking into a gray plume of smoke shot through with white hot explosives. He fell. His abdomen felt crushed in. There was searing pain, and paralyzing tightness, and he couldn't get any air. He was pretty sure his lungs must be lying outside him somewhere, shriveled up beside the dumpsters. The suffocating sensation insisted that he panic, but he forced himself up on his knees, putting his hands on his head.

What the _hell _was in that bag?

Finally his chest came loose, and he sucked in the wind in long, desperate gulps. He looked around while he readjusted to the rhythm of breathing. The world was all in Technicolor again. No sign of the thief, of course. He staggered to his feet.

Michael attempted to run back the way he came and barely managed an irregular jog. He wished he could get a message to the car. _Beam me up, Scotty, and you can yack my ear off._

Out front, the atmosphere was already simmering down. The teens were walking away, going to find a nice quiet spot to make out, probably. Michael trailed after them, searching the parking lot from end to end, on the lookout for anybody who was leaving in too much of a hurry. The victim of the theft seemed to be doing better. A couple people were escorting her to a wooden bench, encouraging her to have a seat. One woman had her arm wrapped around the older lady's shoulders.

Everyone was acting like it was over, but Michael felt too responsible to accept that. That lady did not deserve to foot the bill for his dumb mistake. Unless the guy strapped on a pair of angel wings, he couldn't have gotten far. He had to be skulking around here someplace.

The Mercedes's alarm cut off. The abrupt quiet seemed louder than all the previous siren cries put together. It made Michael hyperaware of his own footsteps, and he heard the scuffle of a pebble he unintentionally kicked across the blacktop. The rock dinged against something. He turned to see what it hit, facing the rear end of a van. It looked fine, and Michael would have kept going, but the guy was evidently hunkered down close by and thought he'd been spotted. He jumped up from behind the other side of the vehicle, gawking at Michael like a deer caught in rush hour traffic, and bolted.

Michael chased him, but the guy was unexpectedly fast (or Michael was uncharacteristically slow), and the gap between them widened.

The guy cleared the last of the parked cars. He was a little ways away from the hill that would lead up to the other restaurant's parking lot when he stopped. His back straightened, confidence increasing in light of some kind of good news. He held out the purse as if it was a victory flag.

Michael turned to see who the guy was signaling to. Of all the getaway cars in existence, the last thing he expected to witness was a stately white limousine gliding around the corner. He pushed his legs faster, hopping into and then out of an empty truck bed to avoid having to go around it. It looked like he would get to the guy before the guy got to the limo, but, just as he was closing in, a family pulled out right in front of him.

There were kids in the backseat. They didn't even notice when one of their windows almost sideswiped his much-abused face. The adult behind the wheel, on the other hand, slammed on the brakes, pounded on the horn, and started cussing him out through the windshield.

"Sorry. I'm sorry." Michael kept moving, but he knew he had to be more careful and those couple seconds had cost him a lot. The guy was moments away from disappearing into the limo. It would take too long for Michael to reach him now.

Behind the guy's broad shoulders, on the crest of the hill, Michael could just make out the T-top of his new ride. It was lightning quick. It could go by itself. He had no way of knowing if it would hear him from this distance, but it was the only shot he had, and he took it.

"Stop that guy!"

A blast of cool air stung his face. The breeze was too loud, rolling out thick swaths of white noise to muffle his voice, all but guaranteeing his yell was lost in the rustle. The silhouette of the car shrank. It was backing up. Michael's first thought was that it was leaving.

The black Trans Am charged forward and launched off the hilltop. It went airborne, its nose piercing the wind at a sharp, deadly angle. He expected the front end to be obliterated on impact, even as the memory of a hammer rendered powerless against its hood told him that was impossible.

It sounded like a plane passing overhead, or, maybe, how a plane passing overhead would sound if you stood underneath one seconds from landing. A groan born of some combination of speed and mechanics ripped through the stillness, starting loud and ramping up to deafening. There was a shadow ghosting over the weeds on the incline, traveling on a certain trajectory for an unoccupied stretch of land that framed the pavement.

The tires struck ground. The car jolted against the earth, spitting up dirt. It bounced twice, thundering ahead on wild, jarring momentum, and carved fat parallel tracks into the patchy plant life. Then it fishtailed to the side, whipped itself into a hard turn, and hurtled inbetween the thief and the limo, obstructing any chance of escape.

The guy froze, his shock reflected in one of the glossy black doors now standing in his way. The clear windows in front of him did nothing to disguise the fact that there was no one inside the vehicle. As soon as that phenomenon sank in, he made a warbling choking sound and booked it in the opposite direction.

The limo took off without him.

Michael was almost to him now, head spinning in a little awe and a whole lot of triumph as he neared the Trans Am.

It went around the guy, cutting him off a second time. The guy tried to turn around again and wound up tripping over his own feet, tumbling to the ground with his legs all twisted together. Once he was down, the car went into reverse, swung its front end around, and—and started to…

Michael couldn't see the guy anymore. There was just the car in the place where he had been. It rolled overtop of him. It _ran_ him _over_. It must have. It—

Michael stormed up to the car. All he could see were images of the guy mutilated under it, broken beneath the tires, smashed like a bug.

_His car killed someone._

"Hasn't anybody around here ever seen a movie?"

The voice was calm, unfeeling. "Come again?"

"Look, all I'm saying," he swallowed, "is they should've seen it coming."

"Who should have seen what coming, Michael?"

"Sure, give the invincible machine a mind of its own. What's the worst that could happen? What kind of sick monkey brains cooked up a plan like that?"

"I've no idea what you're talking about, but the implications are insulting."

"What am I talking about," Michael echoed, words low and cynical. "I'm talking about the guy—the dead guy—the one you're sitting on top of right now!"

"Michael—"

"Should've known better. This whole thing's just beggin' for trouble."

"Michael."

"That's what you get for messing around in Frankenstein's laboratory, what I get for relying on anything but myself."

"_Michael_."

He came at the car, aching to knock out a mirror or a fog light, but sense got through at the last instant. All that would crack was his bones. "What?"

"If you care to shift three inches to your left, you will see the delinquent in question is unharmed. I've merely restrained him for you."

He wasn't sure he heard that right. It sounded like the car was speaking through a radio station with a flimsy signal, a little fuzzy. Might have been the hiss of the breeze.

Michael did like it said. The guy was pinned between the car and the hillside. He looked shaken up but otherwise fine. The only part of him still in motion was his mustache, quivering in time with the nerves of his upper lip. His hands were empty.

The purse wound up a couple feet away. It was lying on its side, and the clasp holding it closed had busted. Micheal eyed it, frowning, still throbbing where it struck him. He came closer and knelt to peer inside.

A cruiser pulled up beside him, flashing red and blue. The police had arrived.


	3. The Microchip Producer

"...who told me I ought to get me one, claimed it's well worth the cost. Linda's a right sensible person. Got a good head on her shoulders, that one does. You ever just listen to somebody and know you're better off taking their advice?"

"Not really. I think the safest bet is to stick to your own advice, but she did you a favor here." Michael stretched his legs out in front of him, trying to get comfortable on the hard wooden bench. He gazed ahead at the cops, standing with their heads angled toward each other in a two-person huddle. Since law enforcement was taking a break from asking the questions, he thought he might as well pick up the slack and glean a few answers of his own. "So, you just got the car alarm."

Beatrice Lennox was perched beside him, the scrap of paper he'd written Devon's phone number on clenched in her fist, her nearly-stolen purse draped securely across her body. "Just had it installed on Wednesday. I know it was Wednesday, because the first thing I did was drive to the grocery, and they were having a sale—"

"Uh huh. Listen, Beatrice—"

She held up a finger. "Bea."

He smirked. "Bea. Do you carry anything unusual in your bag? Anything someone might want in particular?"

"I imagine cash and credit cards appeal to everyone."

"Yeah, sure, but uh..." Michael leaned closer. "That guy, the thief? He hit me with it once, and, I got to tell ya, it felt like a concrete block."

Bea tugged at the ends of her white, curly hair, pulling it down past her chin only to let it spring up again. "I'm sorry about that. I've been meaning to clean it out. My neighbors are having a garage sale next week, and I was fixing to—"

"A limo showed up for him, ma'am. Now, in my experience, common criminals don't make getaway plans like sixteen-year-olds on prom night." He lowered his voice. "If there is something bigger going on here, you should let me know."

"Why?" Her response to his attempt to be inconspicuous was to speak even louder. "What is your experience, exactly? You said you weren't with the police."

"I'm not. I'm working with a…" What was the business term for a billionaire's posthumous pipe dream? "…experimental branch of a private organization."

"An organization for what?"

Michael cocked his head to the side. "You know, for someone with nothing to hide, you're awful curious."

Bea's mouth set in a straight line. Her lipstick was the same shade as her Mercedes. "I'm just wondering where your people are. Surely they don't expect you to play the hero all by yourself."

"They gave me a—a very specialized bag of tricks. Don't know how to use it yet, but one thing I do know is, you can never be sure who's working for who, even if it seems obvious. The wrong people find out you got something valuable, they'll figure a way to get it. And the next guy might not be patient enough to wait around for you to leave whatever you have unattended."

"You make it sound like I'm carrying diamonds." She laughed, eyeing the leather strap digging into her shirt. "As much as I appreciate everything you've done, Michael, all I really have is sixty dollars and an attachment to too much junk."

"That's fine, if it's the truth. It makes no difference to me anyway." He got up to leave. "I'm not from around here, and I'm not planning to stay."

She made no move to stop him, but that wasn't any cause for concern. The offer was on the table. Oftentimes, recipes yielded the best results when they were left to simmer.

Michael came up alongside the police cruiser. The thief was where he belonged now, handcuffed in the backseat. He was looking out the window. Not at Michael, though. Ever since the car chased him down, he refused to take his eyes off it.

"Knight?"

"Hey, Knight!"

It took longer than it should have for Michael to turn to the officers. The name didn't spark any reflexes. He had to take it in first.

The bulkier of the pair, the one with a few lines of tough living wrinkling his brow, offered him his ID. "Here's that back."

Michael took the license and put it in the wallet that had been made up for him, unable to ignore the headshot of his new face. He didn't remember having that picture taken, or having any pictures taken, for that matter, since he woke up from surgery in a stranger's house. This didn't look like a dopey, fresh-off-the-operating-table kind of photo either. There was no sign of where the bullet went in, or where it busted out, or any angry, red incision lines. Maybe something could be done to erase all that, but, even then, the personality behind the eyes seemed off. The hair stood up on the back of his neck as he looked at it.

"So," the cop began, then paused.

Michael pocketed the wallet and looked up, thinking for a tense second that there was something wrong with the license in the eyes of the law too. "Yeah?"

"We appreciate what you did."

"We'd like it better with less showboating." The other cop looked to be around Michael's age and gave him some serious side-eye. He was blond, freckle-faced. "Craig, in the backseat there, swears up and down you weren't driving when he got pinned by the car."

"Craig, huh?" Michael was a good five or six inches taller than this officer. He hunched his shoulders in an attempt to minimize the height difference. "That wouldn't have been my first guess."

"He says there was no one behind the wheel, and it flew off the hill by itself."

"Oh, come on, Jerry." The older cop looked skyward. "The man was scared out of his mind."

"I would be too, if I came that close to being mowed down."

"But he's okay." Michael glanced at the car. "I thought the guy was fine."

"I'll say he is. He's turned down the offer for medical attention multiple times now, matter of fact." The older cop aimed the last part at his partner, a snappy what-more-do-you-want implied between the words. "Eh, he had it coming. Whatever fright you gave him, he asked for when he decided to nab that purse. You some kind of stunt driver, Knight?"

"Whoever was controlling the car must be."

The officer snorted in amusement. "Right." He shifted. "If you're all done chasing your rainbows, Jerry, we've still got to finish up with Ms. Lennox."

"Yeah, alright." Jerry made it a point to walk close by the car, obviously trying to peer in the windows as he passed it, but the transparent glass that had sent Craig running for the hills was now inexplicably tinted black as pitch.

Michael chalked it up to more talking car weirdness and waited for the cop to stride away before approaching the vehicle himself. Its body was dusted grey in places, and green leaflets and coppery mud were caked into the tires from the rough landing in the dirt. A cluster of light brown specks had sprayed up onto the door, creating a swirling pattern around the handle. It was gritty at the moment, but he could still feel the spookily smooth finish beneath the grime when he grabbed it. He knew what it _wasn't_ made of—fiber glass or metal—but he didn't think that narrowed down the periodic table much. The mystery meat substance only accounted for a little piece of his uneasiness in any case. Twice as off-putting was the reminder that his first reaction to the synthetic slickness of it had been to draw some warped connection to the texture of human skin.

"Some partner you are." It was Jerry's voice. He was speaking from farther away, just barely loud enough to hear. "You're supposed to back me up."

"Ha!" The other cop answered with a short bark of a laugh. "That's the beauty of free will, kid. I don't have to back you up when you're playing the fool."

Michael grinned to himself and got in. The engine purred to life in response to his own actions, behaving like it was part of a regular vehicle for once. Everything seemed fine, and he was even looking forward to unleashing all that horsepower back on the open road, in spite of the accompanying strangeness. He reached to put it in gear.

As soon as he touched the shifter, it stuck to his fingers like the underside of a roll of tape. He recoiled, confused by the damp, gummy residue left on his hand. "What the hell?"

He looked over. Beyond the gear stick, he caught sight of his soda bottle lying on its side on the floor and dove down to grab it. There was a cola-colored stain beneath the mouth of the bottle, but it was too small, the glass too lightweight, to make a dent in the horror of his slowly dawning realization. He remembered leaving the full, open drink, leaning and upright. He thought back on the car's wild descent from the hill and brought his fist down hard on his knee.

"Damn it!"

Now that he was paying attention, he noticed the dash was half-dark. All the lights around the steering column were off, but the mini TVs on the far end were on, the lights and buttons beneath them still glowing. Hopefully that meant it wasn't totally ruined. Michael didn't need to understand what it all did to know he never met a set of wires that came out of an encounter with any liquid without a few sparks.

He could only cross his fingers and pray that Devon wasn't too keen on 'you break it, you bought it' policies. Even if he ignored the fact that he was legally dead and lost all his assets, the car had to be galaxies above his pay grade. He could probably commit himself to ten lifetimes of servitude and never pay it off.

At least it was in his name. Or… Michael _Knight's _name. That would complicate any impending lawsuits. On the other hand, Wilton Knight's people doctored up all the documentation to legitimize his new identity. If they could fabricate the paperwork, he was willing to bet they could make it disappear just as easy.

"Gee, I sure hope this thing still works," he said lamely, trying to provoke a response from the car without having to admit he was talking to a car. He stared at the red square above the cruise mode settings.

Nothing.

He cleared his throat, spoke up. "It would be nice to know what kind of damage I'm dealing with here."

Not a flicker.

Michael reached out to feel the red square. Worse than sticky, it was wet. All the multicolored clutter surrounding it was even drippy in places. He wiped at it with the back of his hand and attempted to address the car directly, stooping to the certifiably insane approach as a last resort.

"Hey, uh..." What did the voice say it was again, technically? The car's… microchip producer or something like that? Probably not even close. "Computer?"

Static erupted over the car's sound system, a crackling wave, like he was having a conversation with someone who just exhaled heavily into the receiver of a phone. "Do you mean me?"

"Yeah—yes." Michael grasped the steering wheel at both ends, hanging on the dry, synthesized drawl. There was no change to the dash, but it didn't scream bankruptcy as loud as before. "Well, at least you're not busted."

"I would hardly say that." The red square blinked a couple times, but it was out of sync with the voice.

"So, what? All the stuff that's off isn't working?"

"I diverted power from the areas impacted by the spill in the interest of preserving some function. I can't determine how successful my efforts were without accessing the sodden features, which would defeat the purpose of shutting them down."

"Okay. No big deal. I'll get by without them until they dry out." It wasn't like he would even know what he was missing.

"Really, Mr. Knight, I didn't expect you to be so uninformed." The voice got kind of snippy. "Allowing the sugars to remain in contact with my components for any length of time will only degrade them further."

"What a shame," Michael grumbled. He would not be talked down to by something he rode around in.

He put the vehicle in reverse. Luckily the stickiest part of shifting gears seemed to be confined to his hand. He gave it some gas, building momentum as he backed into the grass, then cut the wheel and whipped around front ways, high-tailing it for the road. He had a reputation as a stunt driver to uphold, after all. As he drove past the cops, he lifted his hand in a motionless wave, taking in their opposed expressions. The older one looked bemused, the younger furious. It was all Michael could do to hold back a chuckle until they were safely confined to the rear view mirror.

"I fail to see the humor in this situation," the car said. "Your carelessness has placed us at a severe disadvantage."

"It can't be that bad. I'm chugging along fine." Michael eyed the still-ticking speedometer as proof.

"Despite the fact that _I _am still perfectly capable of motion, I require extensive cleaning and a potential plethora of replacement parts. We should notify Mr. Miles now."

"Tell Devon? No way! He thinks little enough of me as it is."

"Then I suppose you would owe him the satisfaction of being proven right, wouldn't you?"

Michael scowled at the faulty voice box. Couldn't those components degrade any faster? He could just ignore it until it shorted out, but then the car might intercede on its own behalf, snatching control right from his hands, like it had when he was playing chicken with the semi. He steered more forcefully at the memory, but homes and office buildings kept whizzing by, and he never met any resistance.

Maybe Auto Cruise was one of the things that was powered down.

"Michael, the beverage is wreaking havoc on my audio systems." The voice came through softer, muffled with static, as if to demonstrate what it was saying. "The invasion is most uncomfortable."

He sighed. The car _did _come through for him when he asked for its help, and it was _his _pop that spilled all over the place. And he would have to wipe everything down sooner or later. "Okay, okay, I hear ya. I'll clean it up."

"Thank you, but I'm afraid a superficial scrubbing won't address the issue."

"Probably not, but it'll get you by for a while, right?"

"No, Michael, it won't. I'm not sure you understand. The corrosive poison—"

He scoffed. "Hang on a minute. What poison? We're talking about a little soda pop."

"That distinction is meaningless where I am concerned."

"I don't get migraines, but you have got to be the worst headache in the world!"

Michael mashed the accelerator to the floor. The speed tried to knock him back in the seat, but he was ready for it and held on tight, refusing to be tossed around by the whims of the machine. He only gunned it for a few seconds, just long enough to burn off steam. It was still enough to noticeably change the scenery. The gaps between the businesses were widening. He was on his way out of town.

He pulled up to a stop sign, checked to make sure there was no one behind him, and looked down on the red square. "Here's how this is gonna go. You quit complaining, and I'll tidy things up as best I can. It might not be perfect, but I've stayed put too long already, and I am not going to let Tanya get away so you can get your transistors polished. Got it?"

"Yes, Michael."

The answer was immediate and so totally agreeable that it took him off guard.

"Good. Glad, uh, that's settled." He let off the brake, repositioning his hands and cringing as he fought to pry his sticky fingers from the wheel. "Ugh."

The red square blinked twice. "My point exactly."


End file.
